Lee Cataluna: Mechanic helps keep community running

In the last few weeks, three different people suggested I write about Jim Hirakawa. It seems they all wanted to make sure he knows he’s loved and needed so he doesn’t think about retiring.

He is not thinking of retiring.

Jim Hirakawa will be 89 this year. He’s been at the same job — at Palolo Auto Service, the 76 Station on Waialae Avenue — for 75 years.

“I keep coming to work because people have been so good to me. I want to be there for them,” Hira­kawa said.

Besides the usual stuff like oil changes, brake pads and safety checks, Hirakawa provides a vital service to the Kaimuki and Palolo communities. He is a living reminder of how neighbors used to look out for one another and how businesses owners believed in being fair with customers. In a neighborhood where many residents are seniors and want to keep driving safely as long as they can, Hirakawa has been the go-to guy for decades, long after other family-owned service stations closed. He has that old-time mechanic’s almost psychic ability to diagnose a car’s problem by sound and feel, and is able to explain complicated repairs in understandable terms.

“There are four widows who live near me. They tell me I cannot stop working because they want to keep driving, ” Hirakawa said.

Though he doesn’t change tires or lift batteries anymore, his knowledge of all things auto- motive is amazing, and the mechanics on staff often consult with him on repairs. He ends up doing neighborly things like giving an honest assessment of a car that belonged to an older person who is no longer driving, then calling up a minister who is looking to buy a good used car and making a connection between the two parties.

“I try to be as useful as I can,” Hirakawa said.

In 1944 his father, Harold Hirakawa, started the business on the lot he purchased on Waialae Avenue. Gas then was 20 cents a gallon. His father worked from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. six days a week, plus extra hours on Sunday.

Jim, 13 at the time, would take the bus after school and work alongside his dad, starting with stuff like changing the bulbs in headlights.

In high school he was always dirty. “When I had to work in the cafeteria at McKinley, I would say, ‘I want to make the salad,’ and they would take one look at my grease-stained hands and say, ‘Oh, no. You wash pots and pans.’”

These days he’s at work on Mondays and Saturdays answering the phone and keeping records by hand in the small office. There are six employees, including Hirakawa’s son Ross, who manages the business. Every day, Hirakawa reads the obituaries to see whether there’s a name he recognizes from the neighborhood. If there is, he sends a card to the family. Everything is changing so much around Palolo Auto Service. Hirakawa is trying his best to be the steady link to a simpler time.

“If this work is keeping me going, I’ll keep coming,” he said.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.